As I type this, my cat Lucy is in my lap, contentedly purring away and reposing in a very relaxed, semi-comatose state. In other words, her normal mode of consciousness.

That has nothing to do with what will follow. It’s just a freebie. You’re welcome.

Tonight in my TNT class, the teacher spoke about writing out your mission statement, something that combines your gifts and passions into one concise statement.

What is yours? How has God uniquely gifted you to make a difference in this crazy, beautiful, neurotic world we live in? What are your passions, the very things that make your blood pulse through your veins and make you come truly alive?

How has God called you to be a difference-maker?

Better yet, will you be crazy enough yourself to believe that you CAN make a difference instead of retreating to cynical snide remarks about the current state of affairs?

12 men were crazy enough to believe they could change the world. And they did. You know them better as the 12 apostles, and Christianity is now a worldwide phenomenon thanks to these poor, illiterate nobodies who refused to take no for an answer.

The question isn’t if you will change the world, but how and when. To not even try and accept the status quo is to work for change but not for the better.

I was reminded of something tonight at Kairos. It goes a little like this:

The world determines your worth by what you can contribute to the collective and by how much they can squeeze out of you. Which means that if you’re unable to contribute in a meaningful way, you have no value and can be disposed of, whether you’re unborn, a special needs child or an elderly person.

Mother Teresa said once that it is a poverty that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. It’s a poverty that anyone should die because they are an inconvenience to our way of life. It’s a tragedy when human life becomes cheap.

On the other hand, God values us for bearing His image and because He made us. No other reason. The Bible says that before God made us, He chose us. He set His love on us.

You are more than a random collection of molecules brought about by accident or chance. You are uniquely designed by the Creator, one of a kind and priceless in God’s eyes.

Remember that. People will treat you like you’re worthless. Some will even call you worthless. But God through Jesus and the Cross says that you are priceless.

One of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, wrote:

“First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: ‘These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief” (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World).

This is from a book I just finished reading. I don’t agree with everything the author says, but I agree with this:

“As I looked out over the shivering crowd, I suggested that perhaps Mary Magdalene thought the resurrected Christ was a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from His own tomb under His nails. Of course, the depictions in churches of the risen Christ never show dirt under His nails; they make Him look more like a wingless angel than a gardener. It’s as if He needed to be cleaned up for Easter visitors so He looked more impressive and so no one would be offended by the truth. But then what we all end up with is a perverted idea of what resurrection looks like. My experience, however, is that the God of Easter is a God with dirt under His nails.

Resurrection never feels like being made clean and nice and pious like in those Easter pictures. I would have never agreed to work for God if I had believed God was interested in trying to make me nice or even good. Instead, what I subconsciously knew, even back then, was that God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new.

New doesn’t always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention I was right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyways. New is the thing we never saw coming – never even hoped for – but ends up being what we needed all along.

‘It happens to all of us,’ I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. ‘God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.'”

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give” (Khalil Gibran, The Prophet).

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you” (John Bunyan).

I was thinking as I was listening to Lionel Ritchie on the way home, the reason I love a good movie or good book or good song is that it is just a way for the artist to tell his or her story in such a way that when I take it in, it feels a lot like my own story. It’s like Lionel is singing my own words in a more eloquent way than I could ever express them.

Art requires sacrifice. It requires being vulnerable to share yourself with the world. Not always your best self. Sometimes, it’s the less attractive, un-Photoshopped version of you that gets put out there.

But you give anyway.

God has called us to be generous. Not just with our money and possessions, but also with our time, our talents, our life experiences, and with our lives.

Really, it all belongs to God. Every bit of it. Even you belong to God. You were after all bought with a very great and very high price. If the price was much too high, God still paid it anyway– not grudgingly but willingly and gladly.

If my treasure is where my heart is, then my checkbook tells me who (and what) I’m really and truly worshipping. Ouch. That last line was really convicting.

As I’m figuring out, you can learn to be generous and it’s never too late to start. It starts with the tithe but doesn’t end there. After all, the New Testament standard of giving is the Cross. As my pastor once said, you don’t stand in front of Jesus with His nail-pierced hands and feet and wounded side and debate percentages. You give all because Jesus gave all.

“That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing” (Simone de Beauvoir).

Yes, it is 11:45 pm on a Saturday night. It’s just me and Lucy hanging out together and Lucy has apparently already called it a night.

So it’s just me.

I loved how crisp and brisk the air was today on this truly Autumn-esque day. I could stand for it to stay this way for the next month or so.

I visited my usual Franklin haunts and still managed to be home on a Saturday by 9 pm. How sad is that? I need to think of some new Franklin places to haunt.

But fall does something to me. It reminds me of just about all my happy childhood memories and the people who aren’t here anymore and even some of my old pets who aren’t here anymore.

I’m reading a very interesting book called Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber. I don’t agree with all her politics or theology, but it is a well-written book with some occasionally profound insights. Read it at your own risk (it has some very non-Baptist words in it).

I’ll keep you informed on my my next choice of book after this one, as well as any notable restaurants or coffee shops I visit. As always, err on the side of grace, especially when it comes to your own faults and weaknesses.

Good night out there in social media land.

I just had a great image for what grace looks like: it’s when God comes up to you who have basically wasted your life up to this point and says, “I’m doing something great in the world and I want you to be a part of it.”

I still sometimes have a hard time believing it. God wants me? The kid who usually got picked either next to last or last for kickball and other elementary school sports teams?

Maybe you feel like no one notices you or knows you. Maybe you’ve felt unwanted even by those who were supposed to be closest to you, like your parents or your children or your spouse.

Get this: God wants you. Not because there’s no one else available and all the good ones have already been drafted. God looks at you and says, “Yeah, I want that one on my team.”

I’ll never get over grace because I’ll never get over the amazing feeling of being wanted and chosen and pursued and rescued. And best of all, it’s God who wants me and chooses me and pursues me and rescues me.

I don’t mind being a broken record when it comes to grace. Maybe if I keep repeating the refrain about that amazing grace that saved a wretch like me, it will finally sink in.

So I hope you don’t get tired of hearing about grace from me. If you do, too bad. I’m gonna keep talking about it because it changed my life.

“Lord, I come to You with open hands. If all I have is You and my next breath, that will be enough” (A prayer a friend of mine taught me).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those open hands. Especially after the speaker at Kairos mentioned holding on to your stuff, your dreams, and your life with open hands.

Sometimes, I can live like that and I’m happy. I’m content.

Other times, I live with clenched fists, holding tightly to my things and my ideas about how life should go. Those times are when I’m unhappy and anxious, constantly comparing myself with others in an unhealthy kind of competition.

The truth is that I don’t own anything. It all belongs to God. According to King David the psalmist, the earth and its fullness are God’s. That includes my stuff. That includes me.

Open hands equal surrender. Open hands are my way of saying, Not my will, but Yours.”

My prayer is the prayer Henri Nouwen prayed that I’ve probably quoted here before, but it’s worth repeating:

“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.”

“’And you, Ring-bearer,’ she said, turning to Frodo. ‘I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.’ She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. ‘In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out” (Galadriel, Lord of the Rings).

My friend and I went walking in Crockett Park after work today. It turns out I misjudged the time of the sunset. I thought it was at 7:21, but my Weather app was still on the Gatlinburg setting. The sun actually set at 6:30ish.

So we ended up walking in the dark.

Thankfully, I had my trusty flashlight app. I couldn’t see too much with it, but I couldn’t see ANYTHING without it. It was that dark.

Immediately, I thought of every scary movie I’d ever seen where all those people who go walking at night in the dark have unpleasant things happen to them. Usually by people wearing Shatner masks or hockey masks.

Then I thought of that familiar line “though I walk through a valley dark as death I fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4).

God is with us in the dark.

I read this recently and thought I’d wrap up with these words:

“It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us…” (Ann Voskamp)